civilwarwikiaorg-20200214-history
Frank Furness
|died= |image= |caption= |placeofbirth= Philadelphia, Pennsylvania |placeofdeath= |placeofburial= Laurel Hill Cemetery Philadelphia, Pennsylvania |placeofburial_label= Place of burial |allegiance= United States of America Union |branch= United States Army Union Army |rank=Captain |serviceyears=1861-1864 |unit=6th Pennsylvania Cavalry |battles='Civil War' Battle of Brandy Station Battle of Gettysburg Battle of Trevilian Station |awards=Medal of Honor |laterwork= Architect }} Frank Heyling Furness (1839–1912) was an acclaimed American architect of the Victorian era. He designed more than 600 buildings, most in the Philadelphia area, and is remembered for his eclectic, muscular, often idiosyncratically-scaled buildings, and for his influence on the Chicago architect Louis Sullivan. Furness was also a Medal of Honor recipient for his bravery during the Civil War. . Photo: 1900.]] , University of Pennsylvania (1891).]] Toward the end of his life, his bold style fell out of fashion, and many of his significant works were demolished in the 20th century. Among his most important surviving buildings are the University of Pennsylvania Library (now the Fisher Fine Arts Library), the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia, all in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Biography Furness was born in Philadelphia on November 12, 1839. His father, William Henry Furness, was a prominent Unitarian minister and abolitionist, and his brother, Horace Howard Furness, became America's outstanding Shakespeare scholar. Frank, however, did not attend a university and apparently did not travel to Europe. He began his architectural training in the office of John Fraser, Philadelphia, in the 1850s. He attended the Ecole des Beaux-Arts-inspired atelier of Richard Morris Hunt in New York from 1859 to 1861, and again in 1865, following his military service. Furness considered himself Hunt's apprentice and was influenced by Hunt's dynamic personality and accomplished, elegant buildings. He was also influenced by the architectural concepts of the French engineer Viollet-le-Duc and the British critic John Ruskin. , Philadelphia (1871-76), Furness & Hewitt.]] (1876).]] Furness's first commission, Germantown Unitarian Church (1866–67, demolished ca. 1928), was a solo effort, but in 1867 he formed a partnership with Fraser, his former teacher, and George Hewitt, who had worked in the office of John Notman. The trio lasted less than five years, and its major commissions were Rodef Shalom Synagogue (1868–69, demolished) and the Lutheran Church of the Holy Communion (1870–75, demolished). Following Fraser's move to Washington, D.C., to become supervising architect for the U.S. Treasury Department, the two younger men formed a partnership in 1871, and soon won the design competition for the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (1871–76). Louis Sullivan worked briefly as a draftsman for Furness & Hewitt (June - November 1873), and his later use of organic decorative motifs can be traced, at least in part, to Furness. By the beginning of 1876, Furness had broken with Hewitt, and the firm carried only his name. Hewitt and his brother William formed their own firm, G.W. & W.D. Hewitt, and became Furness's biggest competitor. In 1881, Furness promoted his chief draftsman, Allen Evans, to partner (Furness & Evans), and, in 1886, did the same for four other long-time employees.James F. O'Gorman, George E. Thomas & Hyman Myers, The Architecture of Frank Furness (Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1973), pp. 200-03. The firm continued under the name Furness, Evans & Company as late as 1932, two decades after its founder's death.Michael J. Lewis, Frank Furness: Architecture and the Violent Mind (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., Inc., 2001), p. 251. (1892-93, demolished 1953). Furness greatly expanded the Wilson Brothers & Company's 1881 station (right), and designed the Pennsylvania Railroad offices (center). When it opened, this was the world's largest passenger railroad terminal.]] relief sculptures were by Karl Bitter.]] Over his 45-year career, Furness designed more than 600 buildings, including banks, office buildings, churches, and synagogues. As chief architect of the Reading Railroad, he designed about 130 stations and industrial buildings. For the Pennsylvania Railroad, he designed the great Broad Street Station (demolished 1953) at Broad and Market Streets in Philadelphia, and, for the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, the ingenious 24th Street Station (demolished 1963) alongside the Chestnut Street Bridge. He was one of the most highly paid architects of his era, and a founder of the Philadelphia Chapter of the American Institute of Architects. His residential buildings included numerous mansions in Philadelphia and its suburbs (especially the Main Line), as well as commissioned houses at the New Jersey seashore, Newport, Rhode Island, Bar Harbor, Maine, Washington, D.C., New York state, and Chicago, Illinois. Furness designed custom interiors and furniture in collaboration with Philadelphia cabinetmaker Daniel Pabst. Examples are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the High Museum in Atlanta, Georgia. Mark-Lee Kirk's set designs for Orson Welles's 1942 film The Magnificent Ambersons seem to be based on Furness's ornate Neo-Grec interiors of the 1870s.Lewis, p. 108. A fictional desk designed by Furness is featured in the John Bellairs novel The Mansion in the Mist. Furness broke from dogmatic adherence to European trends, and juxtaposed styles and elements in a forceful manner. His strong architectural will is seen in the unorthodox way he combined materials: stone, iron, glass, terra cotta, and brick. And his straightforward use of these materials, often in innovative or technologically-advanced ways, reflected Philadelphia's industrial-realist culture of the post–Civil War period. Furness's independence and modernist Victorian-Gothic style inspired 20th-century architects Louis Kahn and Robert Venturi. Living in Philadelphia and teaching at the University of Pennsylvania, they often visited Furness's Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts—built for the 1876 Centennial—and his University of Pennsylvania Library. Furness married Fanny Fassit in 1866, and they had four children: Radclyffe, Theodore, James, and Annis Lee. Furness died on June 27, 1912, and is buried in Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia. Military service During the Civil War, Furness served as Captain and commander of Company F, 6th Pennsylvania Volunteer Cavalry ("Rush's Lancers"). He received the Medal of Honor for his gallantry at the Battle of Trevilian Station, Virginia, on June 12, 1864, becoming the only American architect to receive this honor. Twenty-five years after fighting in the Battle of Gettysburg, he designed the monument to his regiment on South Cavalry Field: "In design it is a simple granite block, as massive as a dolmen, but surrounded by a corona of bronze lances that are models of the original lances. ... They are depicted in a resting position, as if waiting to be seized at any instant and brought into battle. The sense of suspended action before the moment of the battle is all the more potent because it is rendered in stone and metal, making it perpetual. Of the hundreds of monuments at Gettysburg, Furness's is among the most haunting."Lewis, p. 44. Medal of Honor citation Rank and organization: Captain, Company F, 6th Pennsylvania Cavalry. Place and date: At Trevilian Station, Va., June 12, 1864. Entered service at: Philadelphia, Pa. Birth:------. Date of issue: October 20, 1899. Citation: Voluntarily carried a box of ammunition across an open space swept by the enemy's fire to the relief of an outpost whose ammunition had become almost exhausted, but which was thus enabled to hold its important position.Wittenberg, 2000. Rediscovery , Philadelphia (1879, demolished 1959-60)]] Following decades of neglect, during which many of Furness's most important buildings were demolished, there was a revival of interest in his work in the mid-20th century. The critic Lewis Mumford, tracing the creative forces that had influenced Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright, wrote in The Brown Decades (1931): "Frank Furness was the designer of a bold, unabashed, ugly, and yet somehow healthily pregnant architecture."Lewis Mumford, The Brown Decades: A Study of Arts in America 1865-1895 (New York: 1931), p. 144. The architectural historian Henry-Russell Hitchcock, in his comprehensive survey Architecture: Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (revised 1963), saw beauty in that ugliness: "Of the highest quality, is the intensely personal work of Frank Furness (1839-1912) in Philadelphia. His building for the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Broad Street was erected in 1872-76 in preparation for the Centennial Exposition. The exterior has a largeness of scale and a vigor in the detailing that would be notable anywhere, and the galleries are top-lit with exceptional efficiency. Still more original and impressive were his banks, even though they lay quite off the main line of development of commercial architecture in this period. The most extraordinary of these, and Furness's masterpiece, was the Provident Institution in Walnut [sic Chestnut] Street, built as late as 1879. This was most unfortunately demolished in the Philadelphia urban renewal campaign several years ago, but the gigantic and forceful scale of the granite membering alone should have justified its respectful preservation. No small part of Furness's historical significance lies in the fact that the young Louis Sullivan picked this office - then known as Furness & Hewitt - to work in for a short period after he left Ware's School in Boston. As Sullivan's Autobiography of an Idea testifies, the vitality and originality of Furness meant more to him than what he was taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or later at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris."Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Architecture: Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1958, revised 1963), pp. 194-95. (1886-88, demolished 1963). Passengers entered from the Chestnut Street Bridge, 30 feet above grade level, and proceeded down to the B&O's tracks along the Schuylkill River.]] Architect and critic Robert Venturi in Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (1966) wrote, not unadmiringly, of the National Bank of the Republic (later the Philadelphia Clearing House): "The city street facade can provide a type of juxtaposed contradiction that is essentially two-dimensional. Frank Furness' Clearing House, now demolished like many of his best works in Philadelphia, contained an array of violent pressures within a rigid frame. The half-segmental arch, blocked by the submerged tower which, in turn, bisects the facade into a near duality, and the violent adjacencies of rectangles, squares, lunettes, and diagonals of contrasting sizes, compose a building seemingly held up by the buildings next door: it is an almost insane short story of a castle on a city street."Robert Venturi, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (New York: Museum of Modern Art Papers on Architecture, 1966), pp. 56-57. On the occasion of its centennial in 1969, the Philadelphia Chapter of the American Institute of Architects memorialized Furness as its great architect of the past: "For designing original and bold buildings free of the prevalent Victorian academicism and imitation, buildings of such vigor that the flood of classical traditionalism could not overwhelm them, or him, or his clients ... For shaping iron and concrete with a sensitive understanding of their particular characteristics that was unique for his time ... For his significance as innovator-architect along with his contemporaries John Root, Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright ... For his masterworks, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Provident Trust Company, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Station, and the University of Pennsylvania Library (now renamed the Furness Building) ... For his outstanding abilities as draftsman, teacher and inventor ... For being a founder of the Philadelphia Chapter and of the John Stewardson Memorial Scholarship in Architecture ... And above all, for creating architecture of imagination, decisive self-reliance, courage, and often great beauty, an architecture which to our eyes and spirits still expresses the unusual personal character, spirit and courage for which he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for bravery on a Civil War battlefield."Louis I. Kahn was saluted as the Chapter's great architect of the present. AIA 100: Centennial Yearbook (Philadelphia Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, 1970), pp. 12-13. In 1973, the Philadelphia Museum of Art mounted the first retrospective of Furness's work, curated by James F. O'Gorman, George E. Thomas and Hyman Myers. Thomas, Jeffrey A. Cohen and Michael J. Lewis authored Frank Furness: The Complete Works (1991, revised 1996), with an introduction by Robert Venturi. Lewis wrote the first biography: Frank Furness: Architecture and the Violent Mind (2001). Selected architectural works , Cape May, NJ (1879), now Mid-Atlantic Center for the Arts (MAC).]] , Wilmington, DE (1908).]] Philadelphia buildings *Northern Savings Fund Society Building, 1871-72.Northern Savings Fund Society Building at the Historic American Buildings Survey *Thomas Hockley house, 1875. *Gatehouses, Philadelphia Zoological Gardens, 1875-76.Philadelphia Zoo Gatehouses at Philadelphia Architects and Buildings *Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1876. *Centennial National Bank, 1876 (now Paul Peck Alumni Center, Drexel University). *Kensington National Bank, 1877.Kensington National Bank at the Historic American Buildings Survey *Knowlton (William H. Rhawn mansion), 1881. *Undine Barge Club, 1882-83.Undine Barge Club *First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia, 1885. *University of Pennsylvania Library, 1891 (now the Anne and Jerome Fisher Fine Arts Library). *Mortuary Chapel, Mount Sinai Cemetery (Frankford), 1891-92. *Horace Jayne house, 1895.Horace Jayne house from Flickr *Girard Trust Company Building, 1907 (now the Ritz-Carlton Philadelphia).The concept for this building was Furness's, but it was designed by his partner, Allen Evans, along with the New York firm of McKim, Mead and White. George E. Thomas, Jeffrey A. Cohen & Michael J. Lewis, Frank Furness: The Complete Works (Princeton Architectural Press, revised edition 1996), pp. 338-39.Girard Trust Company at the Historic American Buildings Survey Demolished Philadelphia buildings *Germantown Unitarian Church, 1866-67Unitarian Society of Germantown *Rodef Shalom Synagogue, 1868-69.Rodef Shalom at National Museum of American Jewish History. *Thomas and H. Pratt McKean townhouses, 1923-25 Walnut St., 1869, demolished 1897 and 1920s. *Lutheran Church of the Holy Communion, 1870-75.Lutheran Church of the Holy Communion at Bryn Mawr College. *Guarantee Trust and Safe Deposit Company, 1875.Guarantee Trust Company at Philadelphia Architects and Buildings *Brazilian Section, Main Exhibition Building, Centennial Exposition (1876). *Church of the Redeemer for Seamen and their Families, 1878.Seamen's Church of the Redeemer at the Historic American Buildings Survey *Provident Life & Trust Company, 1879.Provident Life & Trust Co. at the Historic American Buildings Survey *Library Company of Philadelphia Building, 1879-80.Library Company of Philadelphia at Bryn Mawr College. *Reliance Insurance Company Building, 1881-82.Reliance Insurance Company Building at the Historic American Buildings Survey *National Bank of the Republic (later Philadelphia Clearing House), 1883-84.National Bank of the Republic at Philadelphia Architects and Buildings *Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Station (24th Street Station), 1886-88.Baltimore & Ohio Terminal at the Historic American Building Survey *Alexander J. Cassatt townhouse, 202 West Rittenhouse Square, c. 1888. *Broad Street Station, Pennsylvania Railroad, 1892-93.Broad Street Station at the Historic American Buildings Survey *Arcade Building and pedestrian bridge to Broad Street Station, 1901-02.Arcade Building at the Historic American Buildings Survey Buildings elsewhere *Lindenshade (Horace Howard Furness house), Wallingford, PA, 1873 (demolished 1940).Lindenshade at the Historic American Buildings Survey.Lindenshade after 1885 at Bryn Mawr College. *Fairholme (Fairman Rogers mansion) Carriage House, Newport, Rhode Island, 1874-1875 (now Jean and David W. Wallace Hall, Salve Regina University).Jean and David W. Wallace Hall at the Historic Campus Architecture Project *J. F. Fryer cottage, Cape May, New Jersey, 1878-79.Fryer's Cottage at the Historic American Buildings Survey. *Emlen Physick house, Cape May, New Jersey, 1879.Emlen Physick Estate at the Historic American Buildings Survey *Wallingford Station, Wallingford, Pennsylvania, c. 1880. *Dolobran (Clement A. Griscom mansion), Haverford, Pennsylvania, 1881.Dolobran at the Historic American Buildings Survey *St. Michael's Protestant Episcopal Church, Birdsboro, Pennsylvania, 1884-85.St. Michael's interior at Architectural Archives of the University of Pennsylvania *Sixth Pennsylvania Cavalry (Rush's Lancers) Monument, Gettysburg Battlefield, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, 1888.6th Pennsylvania Cavalry Monument from Flickr *Idlewild (Frank Furness house), Idlewild Lane, Media, PA (c. 1888) *Williamson Free School of Mechanical Trades, Elwyn, Pennsylvania, 1889-90.Williamson Free School Main Building *Baldwin School (built as the second Bryn Mawr Hotel), Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, 1890.Baldwin School at Bryn Mawr College. *Church of Our Father, Hull's Cove, Mount Desert Island, Maine, 1890-91.Church of Our Father *Recitation Hall, University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware, 1891.Recitation Hall from Philadelphia Architects and Buildings *New Castle Public Library, New Castle, Delaware, 1892 (now Old Library Museum, New Castle Historical Society).New Castle Library *Merion Cricket Club, Haverford, Pennsylvania (Allen Evans, Furness's partner, is credited with the design), 1896-97.Merion Cricket Club at the Historic American Buildings Survey. *All Hallows Church, Wyncote, Pennsylvania, 1897. *Haverford School, Haverford, Pennsylvania, 1902.Haverford School from Township of Lower Merion Three adjacent buildings in Wilmington, Delaware Reputed to be the largest grouping of Furness-designed railroad buildings. *Water Street Station, Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, ca. 1887.B&O Water Street Station at Philadelphia Architects and Buildings *Pennsylvania Railroad Building, 1905.Pennsylvania Building at Philadelphia Architects and Buildings *French Street Station (Wilmington Station), Pennsylvania Railroad (now Amtrak), 1908.Wilmington Station at Philadelphia Architects and Buildings Gallery File:22nd & Walnut, from Robert N. Dennis collection of stereoscopic views.jpg|Thomas and H. Pratt McKean Townhouses, 1923-25 Walnut St., Philadelphia, PA (1869, demolished 1897 and 1920s). File:RooseveltDiningroom.jpg|Diningroom of the Theodore Roosevelt Sr. townhouse, New York, NY (1873, demolished). Daniel Pabst probably fashioned the paneling, woodwork and furniture. File:Lindenshade.jpg|Lindenshade (Horace Howard Furness house), Wallingford, PA (c. 1873, demolished 1940). Built for the architect's brother, the country house was later greatly expanded. File:HockleyHouse.jpg|Thomas Hockley house, 235 S. 21st St., Philadelphia, PA (1875), Furness & Hewitt. File:ZooGatehouses.jpg|Gatehouses, Philadelphia Zoo, Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, PA (1875-76, altered), Furness & Hewitt. File:Centennial National Bank.jpg|Centennial National Bank, Philadelphia, PA (1876), now Paul Peck Alumni Center, Drexel University. File:Brazilian section, Main building, from Robert N. Dennis collection of stereoscopic views 2.jpg|Brazilian Section, Main Exhibition Building, Centennial Exposition, Philadelphia (1876). File:FryersCottage.jpg|J. F. Fryer cottage, Cape May, New Jersey (1878-79). The pierced-tile inserts in the railings are believed to have come from the Japanese Pavilion at the 1876 Centennial Exposition. File:Wallingford Station.JPG|Wallingford Station, Wallingford, PA (c. 1880). Horace Howard Furness's country house, Lindenshade, stood on the hill behind the station. File:Knowlton.JPG|Knowlton (William H. Rhawn mansion), Northeast Philadelphia (1881). File:Dolobran.jpg|Dolobran (Clement A. Griscom mansion), Haverford, PA (1881). File:UndineBargeClub.jpg|Undine Barge Club, #13 Boathouse Row, Philadelphia (1882-83). File:First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia, 2125 Walnut Street.jpg|First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia (1886). File:B&OStationFromEast.jpg|Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Station, Philadelphia (1886-88, demolished 1963), looking west from 24th Street. File:B&OWaitingroomStair.jpg|Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Station, Philadelphia, stairs from Lower Waiting Room. File:CassattHouse.jpg|Alexander J. Cassatt townhouse, 202 West Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia (altered by Furness c. 1888, demolished 1972). File:Jayne House Philly.JPG|Horace Jayne house, 19th & Delancey Sts., Philadelphia, PA (1895). File:MerionCricket.jpg|Merion Cricket Club, Haverford, PA (1896-97). Allen Evans was a founding member of the club, and probably designed all its buildings. File:ArcadeBuilding.jpg|Arcade Building and pedestrian bridge to Broad Street Station, Philadelphia (1901-02, demolished 1969). File:GirardTrust.jpg|Girard Trust Company Building, Philadelphia (1907), (now the The Ritz-Carlton Philadelphia). The concept for the bank was Furness's, but it was designed by Allen Evans and the New York firm of McKim, Mead and White. See also *List of American Civil War Medal of Honor recipients: A–F References *Lewis, Michael J., Frank Furness: Architecture and the Violent Mind, 2001. *O'Gorman, James F., et al., The Architecture of Frank Furness. Philadelphia Museum of Art; 1973. *Thayer, Preston, The Railroad Designs of Frank Furness: Architecture and Corporate Imagery in the Late Nineteenth Century, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (Ph.D. dissertation), 1993. *Thomas, George E., Jeffrey A. Cohen & Michael J. Lewis, Frank Furness: The Complete Works. Princeton Architectural Press, revised edition 1996. *Venturi, Robert, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture. The Museum of Modern Art; 1966. * Notes External links * Project List - Furness, Evans & Co. at Philadelphia Architects and Buildings * Project List - Frank Furness at Philadelphia Architects and Buildings * Retrieved on 2008-07-02 * Friends of Furness Railroad District in Wilmington, Delaware Category:American architects Category:Army Medal of Honor recipients Category:People from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Category:People from Delaware County, Pennsylvania Category:Union Army soldiers Category:People of Pennsylvania in the American Civil War * Category:1839 births Category:1912 deaths fa:فرانک فورنس fr:Frank Furness